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Countess Erika's Apprenticeship

<h2>CHAPTER II.</h2> Full four years had passed by since Erika had kissed the young artist. She recalled the little adventure, which had taken upon itself quite magnificent dimensions in her lively imagination, with secret delight and a vague sense of shame. Emma was bearing her cross as best she might, but at every step she well-nigh fell exhausted. Her wretchedness not unfrequently found vent in angry words, for which she was sure to repent and apologize. Her relation with her daughter, now a tall, slender, and unusually clever girl of fourteen, suffered from her general wretchedness. She still loved the child tenderly, but the girl's clear, observant gaze pained her. It had grown much clearer and more penetrating with years. A certain weight, an oppression, seemed to brood over Luzano like the sense of an impending catastrophe. The only ray of sunshine in the unhappy wife's gloomy lot was her little son. Out of several children by her second marriage he alone had survived. He was strong and healthy, the darling of all, his sister's idol. Then--he had hardly passed his seventh birthday when he too died. The little fellow had sickened in the midst of his play, had run to his sister and had fallen asleep with his head in her lap. The girl sat still, not to disturb him, and enjoined silence upon Miss Sophy, who was in the room. The twilight stole gray and vague in upon the bare apartment. The maid-servant--there were no longer any men-servants at Luzano--brought in a lamp, and a plate of rosy-cheeked apples for the children's supper. The boy opened his eyes, but closed them again with a low moan and turned his head away from the light. His mother appeared, saw at a glance how matters stood, and put the little fellow to bed. She did not come down to supper, and when Erika went, as was her wont, to say good-night to her brother, she was not allowed to enter his room. The next morning the doctor was sent for. Whilst he was in the sick-room Erika was taking her daily lesson in English with Miss Sophy, with no thought of any trouble. She was learning by heart her scene from Shakespeare, when her mother suddenly put her head in at the door and said, "Diphtheria!" The tone of her voice and the expression of her face were such as to terrify the girl. But when Erika, trembling with dread, ran towards her, she waved her off and vanished. Miss Sophy was established in the sick-room, which Erika was not allowed to enter. No one paid her any attention, and she spent hours forlornly watching at the end of a long gloomy corridor the door behind which so much that was terrible was going on. If she was seen she was sent away; but before long the entire household was too anxious to pay her the slightest heed. It was about eleven in the forenoon of the fifth day since the first symptoms of the disease had appeared. Erika stood listening eagerly near the door, trembling with a sense of something vaguely terrible going on behind it. Suddenly it opened, and her mother staggered out, her dress disordered, her face distorted with agony, and supported by the little boy's nurse. Behind her came Strachinsky, his handkerchief at his eyes. In absolute terror Erika looked after her mother, who passed her by, even brushing her with her skirt, without seeing her. Then she entered the room which the wretched woman had just left. The bed was covered with a white sheet, which revealed the outline of the little form beneath it. The girl's heart throbbed almost to bursting. She lifted a corner of the sheet: there lay her little brother, dead, so white, and with his sweet face unchanged by disease. The little hands lay half open upon the coverlet, as though life had just slipped from them. A grace born of death hovered above the entire form. His sister gazed in tearless distress. She could not cry; she felt no definable pain, only a terrible heaviness in her limbs, and a weight upon her heart that almost choked her. She bent over the corpse to kiss it, when Miss Sophy rushed into the room, seized her by the arm, and thrust her out of the door. Of course the first thing Erika did was to look for her mother. She found her in the morning-room, seated in a large arm-chair, quivering in every limb. Minna, the nurse, was moistening her forehead with cologne, but she seemed entirely unconscious. Her hands were folded in her lap, and her gaze was fixed on vacancy. Erika could not summon the courage to approach her. Meanwhile, Strachinsky was pacing the room in long strides: his tears were already dried; every now and then he would pause and heave a profound sigh. At first Emma seemed not to notice him, but on a sudden she roused from her apathy, and, passing her hand over her brow, with a feeble, wailing cry, she said, "For God's sake, stop, Nello!" He paused, cleared his throat several times, took an English penknife from his pocket, began to pare his nails, and then went to his wife and stroked her cheek. She shrank from him involuntarily. He groaned feelingly, left her, and went to the window: with one hand he stroked his whiskers, with the other he jingled the keys in his pocket. After a while he began in an undertone, probably with the foolish expectation of distracting the wretched mother's thoughts, to detail what was going on outside, all in a melancholy, sentimental monotone, that would have set healthy nerves on edge. "Ah, see that little sparrow with a straw in its beak! it must be fitting up its winter nest." Poor Emma sat bolt upright, except that her head inclined somewhat forward, and gazed at the man at the window. Suddenly she uttered a short, shrill scream, and, pressing both hands to her temples, rushed out of the room. When she had gone Strachinsky shrugged his shoulders, sighed as if gross injustice had been done him, and retired to his room to make a list of the names of all those whom he wished notified of the death. The funeral took place the third day afterwards. On that day they assembled at the dinner-table as on other days. The poor mother ate nothing, and Erika could scarce swallow a morsel. The tears which had refused to come at first were falling fast upon her new black gown. Strachinsky ate, but after a while he too pushed his plate away. For the first time in her life his stepdaughter was conscious of an emotion of compassion for him. She thought that his grief had made eating impossible, when he cleared his throat, and, "This is intolerable," he whined; "at best I have no appetite, and here is tomato sauce! You know I never eat tomato sauce." His wife made no reply: she only looked at him with her strange new gaze, with eyes from which the last veil had fallen, and which were pained by the light. The look in those eyes would have made one shudder. The clock in the castle tower struck one quarter of an hour after another, bringing ever nearer the time for the interment. The little body was already laid in the coffin. The coffin-lid leaned up against the wall. A fierce restlessness, the strained expectation of a certain moment which was to be the culmination of an intolerable misery, possessed Erika: she hurried from place to place, and at last ran after her mother, who had gone into the garden. It was cold and stormy. The autumn had come late and suddenly. Some bushes had kept all their leaves, but they were blackened and shrivelled; others had retained only a few red and yellow leaflets that fluttered in the wind. The trees, on the other hand, were almost entirely bare. The naked boughs showed dark gray or purplish brown against the cloudy sky: the birches alone could still boast some golden-coloured foliage. On the moist gravel paths and the sodden autumn grass lay wet brown leaves mingled with those but lately fallen. The asters and chrysanthemums, nipped by the first frost, hung their heads, and among all the autumnal decay the poor mother wandered about, seeking a few fresh flowers to lay in her dead child's coffin. With faltering steps, tripping now and then over the skirt of her gown, she tottered from one ruined flower-bed to another. The sharp autumn wind fluttered her dress and outlined her emaciated limbs. From her lips came a low moaning mingled with caressing words. She kissed the few poor flowers, frost-touched, which she held in her hand. Erika walked close behind her. Once or twice she stretched out her hand to grasp her mother's skirt, but withdrew it hastily, as if fearing to hurt her by even the gentlest touch. Ten minutes afterwards the sharp strokes of a hammer resounded through the castle, and the unhappy woman was crouching in the farthest corner of her room, her hands held tightly to her ears. In the night following the funeral Erika was waked from sleep by a low moan. She started up. By the vague light of early dawn, in which the windows were defined amid the darkness, she saw something dark lying upon the floor beside her bed. She cried out in terror, and then it stirred. It was her mother lying there upon the hard floor, where she must have been for some time, for when Erika touched her she was icy-cold. The girl took her in her arms and drew her into the soft warm bed beside her. Neither spoke one word, but their hearts beat in unison: all discord between them had vanished. She had thrown off her burden; she breathed anew; she would stand erect once more. Then she discovered that a heavier burden yet, a fresh tie, bound her to the husband whom now, stripped of all illusion, she detested. The consciousness of this misfortune crept over her slowly; at first she would not believe it, and when she could no longer doubt, it seemed to her that her reason must give way. Erika soon perceived that her mother's misery was not due alone to the loss of her child. No, that pain brought with it a tender and gentle mood. Another burden oppressed her, something against which her entire nature angrily rebelled, and under the weight of which she displayed a gloomy severity from which her daughter alone never suffered. Towards her since the boy's death Emma had shown inexpressible tenderness, and the girl, thirsting for affection, was never weary of nestling close in her mother's arms, receiving her caresses with profound gratitude, almost with devout adoration. Sometimes the mother would smile in the midst of her grief as she stroked the gold-gleaming hair back from her child's pale face with its large dark eyes. "They do not see it," she would murmur, "but I see how pretty you are growing. Poor little Erika! you have had a sad youth; but life will atone to you for it when I am no longer here." "Do not say that!" cried the girl, clasping her mother in her arms. "As if I could endure life without you! Mother! mother!" "You do not dream of what can be endured," her mother said, bitterly. "One submits. Learn to submit; learn it as soon as may be. Do not ask too much from life; ask for no complete happiness: it is an illusion. You, indeed, are justified in claiming more than your poor, ugly mother had any right to, my beautiful, gifted child!" She uttered the words almost with solemnity. Something of the romantic strain which had characterized her through every stage of her prosaic, humiliating existence came to light now in her worship of her daughter. She strongly impressed Erika with the idea that she was an exceptional creature, and, although she was always admonishing her to expect nothing of life, she nevertheless gave her to understand that life was sure to offer something extraordinary for her acceptance. On the whole, in spite of the girl's grief at the loss of her little brother, she would have been happier than ever before had it not been for a growing anxiety with regard to her mother, whose health had entirely given way. Whereas she had been wont from early morning until late at night to make her presence felt throughout the household and on the estate, grasping with a firm and skilled hand the reins which her husband had idly dropped, now she took an interest in nothing. Erika was tortured by anxiety, an anxiety all the more distressing from the fact that she could not define her fears. Towards her husband Emma displayed a daily increasing irritability. But his easy content was not at all disturbed by it. Thanks to a fancy which was ever ready to devise means for sparing and nourishing his self-conceit, he discovered a hundred reasons other than the true one for his wife's attitude towards him. Her irritability was all due, so he informed Miss Sophy, to her situation. And in receiving Miss Sophy's admiring and compassionate homage he found, and had found for some time, his favourite occupation. Emma now lived apart in a large room, which, besides her bed and wash-stand, was furnished only with a couple of book-shelves, two straight-backed chairs covered with horsehair, and a round tiled stove decorated with a rude bas-relief of a train of mad Bacchantes and bearing on its level top a large funeral urn. The boards of the floor were bare, and in a deep window-recess there was an arm-chair. In this chair the miserable woman would sit for hours, her elbows resting upon its arms, her hands clasped, staring into vacancy. In the garden upon which this window looked the snow lay several feet deep; upon the meadow beyond, which sloped gently to the broad frozen river, and upon its icy surface, it was so deep that meadow and river were undistinguishable from each other; upon the dark pine forest that bounded the horizon--upon everything--it lay cold and heavy. All cold!--all white! Huge drifts of snow; no road definable; never a bird that chirped, never a leaf that stirred; all cold and white, without pulsation, without breath, dead,--the whole earth a lovely stark corpse. And the wretched woman's gaze could fall upon naught outside save this white monotony. Spring came. The dignified repose of death dissolved in feverish activity, in the restless change of seasons, vibrating between fair and foul, between purity and its opposite. The earth absorbed the snow, except where in dark hollows it lingered in patches, to disappear slowly in muddy pools. Emma still sat for hours daily in her room with hands clasped in her lap, but her eyes were no longer fixed on vacancy; they had found an object upon which to rest. Among the tender green of the meadows so lately stripped of their snowy covering, glided the river, dark and swollen. How loudly it exulted in its liberation from its icy fetters! "Freedom!" shouted its surging waves,--"Freedom!" Upon this river her gaze was now riveted. Days passed,--weeks; the air was warm and sweet; the window by which she sat was open, and the voice of the river was clear and loud. One afternoon at the end of April the ploughs were creaking over the road, there was an odour of freshly-turned earth in the air, and the fruit-trees were already enveloped in a white mist. The sun had set, and in the west the crescent moon hung pale and shadowy. Erika was standing at the low garden wall, looking down across the meadow. Her youthful spirit was oppressed by anxiety so vague that she could neither define it nor struggle against it: she seemed to be blindly dragged along to meet the inevitable. Her mother had to-day been especially tender to her, but sadder than ever before. She had talked as if her death were nigh at hand, and had spent a long time in writing letters. On a sudden the girl perceived a dark object moving rapidly along in the warm damp evening air,--a tall figure in a black gown which fluttered in the south wind. It was her mother. How quickly she strode through the high rank grass! how strange was her gait! Erika had never before seen any one hasten thus, with long strides, and yet falteringly as though borne down by weariness, on--on towards the dark-flowing river. Suddenly the girl divined what her mother intended to do. She would have screamed, but for an instant her voice failed her, and in the next she was silent from presence of mind, the clear-sight of terror. She clambered over the low wall and flew after her mother, her feet scarcely touching the ground, her breath coming in painful gasps. The dark figure had reached its goal, the river-bank; it leaned forward,--when two nervous, girlish hands clutched the black folds of her gown. "Mother!" shrieked Erika, in despair. She turned round. "What do you want?" she said, harshly, almost cruelly, to her daughter. Then she shuddered violently, and burst into a convulsive sobbing which it seemed impossible to her to control. Her daughter put her arm around her, nestled close to her, and kissed the tears from her cheeks. "Mother," she cried, tenderly, "darling mother!" and without another word she gently led the wretched woman away from the water. The mother made no resistance; she was mortally weary, and leaned heavily upon the slender girl of fourteen. They slowly returned to the house. A white translucent mist was rising from the fields, and flying through it with drooping wings, so low that they almost stirred the grass, a flock of hoarsely-croaking ravens passed them by. In the night Erika suddenly aroused from sleep, without knowing what had wakened her. She rubbed her eyes, and turned to sleep again, when just outside of her door she heard a voice exclaim, "Ah, God of heaven!" In an instant, barefooted and in her nightgown, she was in the corridor, where she saw the cook hurrying in the direction of her mother's room. "What is the matter?" the girl cried, in terror. The cook looked round, shrugged her shoulders, and hurried on. Erika would have followed her, but Strachinsky appeared at the turning of the corridor where the cook had vanished. He looked as if just roused from sleep; he had on a flowered dressing-gown, and carried a lighted candle. Beside him Minna walked, pale as ashes. Strachinsky set the candlestick down upon a long low table in the passage. "Have the horses harnessed immediately," he ordered, "and send the bailiff to K---- for the doctor." "Will not the Herr Baron go himself? People are not always to be relied upon," said Minna, with a significant glance at the master of the house. "Oh, no; the bailiff will attend to it perfectly, and then--you can understand that I do not wish to be away at this time from my wife, who will of course ask for me----" Minna's eyes still being fixed upon him with a very strange expression in them, he added, snapping out his words in childish irritation, "And then--then--it is no business of yours, you stupid fool!" And, turning on his heel, he left her. Minna shrugged her shoulders, and turned towards the staircase to give the necessary orders. Neither she nor Strachinsky had noticed Erika. The girl ran to the nurse and plucked her by the sleeve. "Minna," she asked, in dread, "what is the matter? Is my mother ill?" "Yes." "What is the matter with her? Tell me, Minna! oh, tell me!" But the nurse shook off her clasping hands. "Let me alone, child. I am in a hurry," she murmured. Erika advanced a step, hesitated, and then returned to her room, where she found Miss Sophy in great distress, her head crowned with curl-papers, which she cut out of the Modern Free Press every evening and which made her look half like Medusa and half like a porcupine. "Where are you going?" she asked, seeing that Erika began to dress hurriedly. "To my mother; she is ill." Miss Sophy gently detained her. "Do not go," she said, softly: "they would not let you in; you would only be in the way, now. Wait a little. Your mother does not want you there." And she wagged her porcupine head with melancholy solemnity as she added, "I believe--I think you will perhaps have a little brother, or sister." Erika stared at her. This it was, then! Among the many sad experiences that were to fall to Erika's lot there were none to equal the dull restlessness, the mortal dread mingled with a mysterious, inexpressible emotion, of these hours. She went on dressing, striving only to be ready quickly, as one dresses when the next house is on fire. Then she seated herself opposite Miss Sophy, at a tottering round table upon which stood a guttering candle. For a while all was silent; then there was a noise outside the door. The girl sprang up and hurried out, to see a stout, elderly woman in a tall black cap, with the phlegmatic flabby face of a monk, going towards her mother's room. Erika recognized her as the needy widow of a stone-mason; she was wont to doctor both men and cattle in the village. Her name was Frau Jelinek. The scullery-maid who had brought her was just behind her. They passed Erika without heeding her, and the girl looked after them in a fresh access of dread. Two hours passed. Miss Sophy was asleep; Erika still waked and watched. A light rain had begun to fall; the drops pattered against the window-panes. Once more Erika arose and crept out into the corridor. Trembling in every limb, she stood at the door of the room through which her mother's sleeping-apartment was reached. It was ajar, and light streamed through the crack. She looked in. Strachinsky was seated at a table, playing whist with three dummies. It had for some time past been his favourite occupation. A maid stood in a corner, arranging a pile of linen. Erika was about to address her, when Frau Jelinek, her black leathern bag on her arm, came out of her mother's bedroom. "May I not go to mamma,--just for a moment?" the girl asked, in an agitated whisper. The bedroom door opened again, and Minna appeared. "Is it you, child?" "Yes, yes," Erika made answer. "Do not disturb your mother. Stay in your room till you are called," Minna said, authoritatively. And from the room came the poor mother's weary, gentle voice: "Go lie down, my child; don't sit up any longer; go to bed, dear." For a while Erika stood motionless; then she kissed the hard cold door that would not open to her, and went back to her room. She lay down on the bed, dressed as she was, and this time she fell asleep. On a sudden she sat upright. The candle on the table was still burning, and by its light she saw that Miss Sophy, who had been sleeping on the sofa, was sitting up, awake, and listening, with a startled air. Erika hurried out; Minna met her in the corridor, and at the same moment a vehicle rattled into the courtyard. "The doctor!" exclaimed Minna. "Thank God!" The bailiff appeared on the staircase. "Where is the doctor?" "He was not at home," the man made answer. "Did you not ask where he was and go after him?" Minna asked, impatiently. "No," replied the bailiff, twirling his straw hat in his hands. "But I left word for him to come as soon as he got home." "Fool!" Strachinsky, who had now come into the corridor, exclaimed, shaking his fist at the man. "You are dismissed," he added, grandiloquently. Then, turning to Minna, he said, "Good heavens, if I had a horse I could ride to K----." Without heeding him, Minna hurried down the staircase, and a few moments later a carriage again left the court-yard. Minna had herself gone for the doctor, before her departure beseeching Erika to keep quiet: she should be summoned as soon as it would be right for her to see her mother. The girl obeyed, and sat in her room, rigid and motionless, at the table where the candle was burning down into the socket. At first, to shorten the time, she tried to knit, but the needles dropped from her fingers. Miss Sophy sat opposite her, with elbows upon the table, and her head in her hands, listening. In the distance there was a sound of wheels; it came nearer and nearer. Thank God! It was Minna, and she brought the doctor. There was a hurried running to and fro, and then all was still, still as death. The dawn crept in at the window. The flame of the candle burned red and dim. The rain had ceased, and through the misty window-panes could be seen a glimmer of white blossoms, and behind them a pale-blue sky in which the last stars were slowly fading. Then the door opened, and Minna entered. "Come, Erika," she said, in a low voice. Erika arose hastily. "Have I really a little brother?" she asked, anxiously. Minna shook her head. "It is dead." "And my mother?" "Ah, come quickly." She drew the girl along with her through the long whitewashed corridor. In the room leading to the dying woman's chamber Strachinsky was standing with the physician. The latter stood with bowed head; Strachinsky was weeping. Erika went directly to her mother's bedside. The dying woman's hair was brushed back from her temples; her lips were blue. Erika kneeled down and buried her face in the bedclothes. Her mother laid her hand upon her head and stroked it--ah, how feebly! But how soothing was the touch! In one corner old Minna kneeled, praying. Outside, the world was brightening; there was a golden splendour over all the earth. The birds twittered, at first faintly, then loudly and shrilly. The dying woman stirred among the pillows: Erika was to hear the dear voice once more. "My child, my poor, dear child, I have been a poor mother to you----" "Oh, mother, darling----" "My death will make it all right. Write to----" At this moment Strachinsky knocked at the door. "Emma!" he whispered. The dying woman's face expressed positive horror. "Do not let him come in!" she exclaimed. Erika flew to the door and turned the key; when she returned to the bedside her mother was struggling for breath. Evidently most anxious to impart some information to her daughter, she had not the strength to do so. Once more she passed her hand over Erika's head,--it was for the last time; then the hand grew heavier; it no longer lavished a caress; it was a mere weight. Erika moved, and looked at her mother. The tears stood in her eyes unshed, so wondrous was her mother's face. The battle was won. All the pain of life--the sweet pain of supreme rapture hinting to us of that heaven which we cannot attain, and that other bitter pain pointing to the grave at which we shudder--was for her extinct. Erika threw herself upon the body and covered it with kisses. With difficulty could she be induced to leave it; but when they led her from the room, as soon as the door closed behind her she was docile and gentle. She seemed bewildered, and walked slowly with bowed head beside Minna. Once only she looked back when a thin, melancholy wail resounded through the quiet morning air. It was the bell in the little tower of the castle, tolling restlessly. Years afterwards she could not bring herself to recall in memory the terrible days that followed,--the dreary burden that she dragged about with her from morning until night, the sleep born of utter exhaustion, the slow pursuance of daily custom as in a dream, the awakening with nerves refreshed by forgetfulness, and then the sudden consciousness of misery, the sensation of soreness in every limb, a sensation intensified by every motion, by a word spoken in her presence, the restlessness which drove her hither and thither until in some dim corner she would crouch down and cry,--cry until the very fount of tears seemed dry and her burning eyes would close again in the leaden sleep which still had to yield to the terrible awakening. She felt the most earnest desire to do something, to perform some office of love for her mother; but scarcely for one moment was she left alone with the body. Strangers prepared the loved one for the tomb, the coachman and the gardener lifted her into the coffin. Shortly before it was closed, Strachinsky remembered that his wife had once expressed a wish to be buried in the dress and veil she had worn at her marriage with him. But neither could be found. The cabinet where she was wont to hoard her treasures was empty, except for a lock of hair of her dead boy, and this they laid beneath her head. Her husband bestowed but little thought upon the circumstance. He honestly regretted the dead, and lost his appetite for two days; but as the time for the funeral drew near, he worked himself into an exalted frame of mind, which found vent in solemn pomposity. He had ordered a hearse from the city. Erika was standing at a window of the corridor when, with nodding plumes, it rattled into the castle court-yard, and her misery reached the point of despair. Until then she had not quite comprehended it all. She heard the men stagger down the stairs beneath the weight of the coffin, heard it knock against the wall at a sharp turn. She followed it to the grave. All walked behind the hearse, the shabby splendour of which suited so ill with the rural landscape. Most of the gentry of the surrounding country, who had long since ceased to visit at Luzano, assembled to pay the last honours to the poor woman, but they were only a speck in the endless funeral train. Behind the few black coats and high hats following close upon the hearse came a swarming crowd. All the peasants, day-labourers, and beggars from Luzano and the surrounding estates paid the last token of respect to the martyr gone to her eternal rest: she had been good and kind to all. It was the first of May. The fields were clothed in a light green, and the apple-trees showed pink with half-open blossoms. A reddish smoke curled upward to the skies from the flames of the torches. And there was a flutter of sighs among the blossoming boughs of the trees and above the meadows,--the breath of the freshly-born spring. Through the new life strode death. Noiselessly the funeral train moved on. Erika walked almost mechanically, looking neither to the right nor to the left, only moving forward. On a sudden something attracted her gaze. On a little elevation by the roadside, between two apple-trees, stood a young peasant woman with a child in her arms,--a child who stared at the long procession with large eyes of wonder. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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